India and Israel Against Islamic Terror

51
Dying by the thousands, starving and sick, the Jews held out

and brushed aside every demand for surrender. Ultimately, after

six days all the three walls broke and the Romans rushed in,

and a killing spree began. With weapons or bare hands every

iew fought till death. The remaining few withdrew into the Temple

and continued resistance. In spite of a restraint order by Titus

on the Temple, the angry Roman soldiers set it to fire and

butchered all jews within. However, the district of Herod stood

intact and fighting continued for one more month, before the

defenders were all cut to pieces. Thousands of survivors were

sent in to captivity and the most valiant Simon bar Ciora was

hurled from the Tarpein rock to customarily propitiate the Roman

Gods. Titus struck coins to celebrate Roman holiday and his

victory with an inscription ”Judaea Devicta” or ”Judaea Capita”.

The Torah was taken to the palace of the emperor, and a victory

arch erected, that survives to this day to commemorate not the

Romans but the heroic Jews who outlived their conquerors.
Then passed four centuries of Roman rule after Pompey’s

capture of Jerusalem with all its cruelty and cussedness while the

Jews continued to wait for the advent of the Kingdom of God

and rise of the Messiah. There were pretenders for this coveted

role till Jesus finally came. With a voluminous corpus of theological

quibblings and the circumstances of his birth and the miracles

attributed to him, it is well nigh impossible to establish the

historicity of Jesus. Nevertheless, in the name of this Prince of

Peace and Son of God the zealots of Christianity perpetrated

every conceivable outrage on the -cursed race that begot him;

the cross bearing crusaders, plundering their homes, destroying

their properties and ravishing their women. In Spain Torquemada

burnt, and pil’aged, and drove 200,000 peaceful Jews out of

their homes to exile. So also, Russian Tzar solved the Jewish

Problem by baptizing, expelling and destroying the Jews and

compelled them to live in filthy ghettos. Forced to wear degrading

Badges, robbed of the right of existence as human beings, right

to work and play, despised and spat upon all under the name

°f the Savior, these miserable people had little reason to like the

Son of God. This tale is told in To/dos Yeshu, the Jewish book
52 INDIA AND ISRAEL CHAPTER 2
chronicling these perversions of Christian bigotry during the

middle ages.
An effective effort is afoot now both by liberal Jews and

Christians to learn the truth about the prophet, the doctrinal

content of the Gospels and the Acts and the meaning and

message of Jesus, the Jew converted into Christianity long after

his death. The early life of Jesus is shrouded in obscurity. Except

for canonical Gospels, no authentic records exist either in the

Hebrew lore nor Roman records, except for Tacitus and Suetonius

who mention the word ”Christo” attributed to his crucifixion.

Jesus did not write nor did his disciples, who were entrusted to

spread his message. It was only after his death when the need

arose to teach the gospel to new Christians and spread it

worldwide, that the first accounts were compiled, leading to the

development of the Gospel of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John

from 65 A.D. to the beginning of the second century A.D.

Mathew was originally a Jew, bitterly critical of those who rejected

the Messiahanic claim of Jesus. The sources reveal little while

concealing a lot, and the synoptic problems have not yet been

solved in the absence of authentic material. For paucity of facts

the treatment of Jesus remains essentially subjective. However,

certain facts about Jesus and Christianity are so well chronicled

that it will be futile to dwell on these. What is proposed to be

done is to shed some new light on some relatively less known

facts in this literature.
Section 2: iesus and Thereafter
Born around 4 B.C. of humble parents in Bethlehem, a part of

Galilee, his paternal origin through Joseph goes to the royal

stock of David. The concept of virgin birth was developed much

later after his death. Deprived of the rigid Jewish training of the

Pharisees, he still loved Biblical heroes, the psalms and the

Message of the prophets. The myth of Pontius Pilate’s unwillingness

to punish Jesus to save a ”just man being persecuted through his

righteousness” is a creation of late 1st century A.D. aimed at

enlarging the base of Christianity through the goodwill of gentiles

rather than the Jews. To implicate the enlarged Roman empire
CHAPTER 2
HISTORY OF ISRAEL 53
•n the execution was impolitic, since the new faith could not

antagonise the mightiest empire yet known. Pilate unconcerned

wjth the blasphemy charge executed Jesus as a Roman rebel

due to his Messianic claims. The Romans were experts in the art

of torture, and crucifixion was a natural consequence at Golgotha,

outside Jerusalem where Jesus died carrying the derisive words

”The King of Jews” scratched on his forehead. Even in his agony,

he cried out in the words of the Psalms, he so loved:” My God,

my God, why hast Thou forsaken me.” The martyred Prophet

lived and died a Jew not wishing to desert his people. He

endeavoured to enrich them spiritually and not chart out a new

religion inimical to his own inherited one. He once remarked ”I

was not sent except to bring back the lost sheep of the house

of Israel.” After his death as the belief in his Messianic powers

grew amongst the humble folk, the Jew in Jesus was forgotten,

and affected by the Graeco-Roman culture, a new faith grew up

subordinating the Mosaic law. Stripped of his humanity, and

adorned by imagined miracles, Jesus became a divine figure

while Christianity strode out to conquer the world. Since there

is much controversy about the sin of the Jews against the

Christians, earning them the dubious sobriquet of ” the suckers

of Christian blood and Crucifiers of Jesus,” we shall revert to

certain facts of recorded history.
As Jesus grew up, he became aware of the brutality of the

Romans in the persecution of the Jews. He had known about

the apocalyptic literature regarding the Messiah, but he never

dreamt of a Jewish state completely free from worldly oppression,

till John, the Baptist, the fiery Hebrew.prophet turned Christian,

inspired him to a different path. His sharp tongue and intolerance

°f rnoral lapses reached far and wide, and he sincerely believed

that he was destined to pave the way for the future Messiah.

With his magnetic personality and appeal to the masses, people

’locked to him for Bapitization. Starting from Judaea, his influence

spread far beyond Galilee. He was to change the course of

history and civilization by his preparation for the arrival of Christ

as the much awaited Messiah. Jesus imbibed much of John’s

Slngle-minded pursuit of his goal but his method was milder. His
54 INDIA AMD ISRAEL CHAPTER 2
shining personality, simplicity of preaching with charm and

conviction, his humility and tenderness drew large crowds. Gifted

with a lucid tongue, and vivid imagination his parables spread

far and wide and his message spread from mouth to mouth

even though some what exaggerated. What Jesus said did not in

the least clash with the Jewish thought, even that of the Pharisees.

He preached in the synagogues but emphasized seeking of a

new God devoid of many pretentions of the orthodox. Though

liberalism was not new to the Jews, his message was simpler and

different from the early ones.
He healed the sick on the sabbath-day, mixed with the

sinners and the publicans and made them repent for the sins,

something unusual in the Jewish lore, but not enough to infuriate

tradition, or repudiate Judaism. The criticism of Jesus as mentioned

earlier, was aimed at the fanatics. However, later as the division

between Christians and Jews grew, the new Christians spew

venom and hatred against the Jews with a self-righteousness

denounced by Jesus himself. They revolted against the Jewish

faith which they felt difficult to supplant. Unwittingly Jesus also

rubbed another raw nerve of the Jews, when he proclaimed his

gospel emanated from himself and was not the message of the

Lord. All his teachings are full of pronouncements like,” But I

say unto you...”. Thus Jesus replaced God himself and slowly he

was convinced that he himself was the long-awaited Messiah in

the form of God’s proclaimed son and his task was to prepare

the people for the Kingdom of Heaven.
Jesus deliberately journeyed to Jerusalem during Passover

time almost alone with a very few disciples and rode in the Holy

City on the back of an ass, in keeping with the Messianic tradition.

Thus embellished his great entry was celebrated by shouts of

”Hosannah”. Now Jesus came into his own and criticised almost

everything that the Jews and the priests stood for. He called the

scribes and Pharisees hypocrites and cursed them. He even

physically got removed the money and the vendors out of the

premises of the temple. The act though well-meant, the priests

and the Levites were outraged by the violence. He alarmed the

Sadducee high priest who kept the peace of the community.
ruAPTEK 2 HISTORY OF ISRAEL
55
Fearing violence Pontius Pilate, the Roman Procurator, brought

additional troops to keep peace in anticipation of the Barabbas

rebellion. For the Jews it was only reviving old memories of

slaughter and they insisted that Jesus, the disturber of peace,

must be restrained or removed. Thus by his guileless talks on

the Pharisees, Jesus forced them into an uncompromising

position, and the rest is history. The method of betrayal by

Judas, arrest of Jesus and the role of Sanhedrin, the highest

body of the Jews, and Roman governor is still full of controversy.
To quote Thomas A. Idinopulos in his book Jerusalem Blessed,

Jerusalem Cursed :
”In Jesus’ day the Temple was not only the central religious

shrine, it was also the major industrial and banking facility

of the nation. It received the annual Temple tax payed by

Jews throughout the world. Great sums of money were

deposited at the Temple by wealthy families and by the

hundreds of elderly Jews who had come to retire in the

Holy City. The daily sale of sacrificial animals was routinely

conducted in the Temple area. At the Passover, with the

city’s population bloated by pilgrims from its normal 25,000

to as many as 125,000, one can imagine the congestion of

pilgrims, priests, beasts, blood, and money. Conduit’s carried

blood drained from the sacrificed animals down the southern

side of the Temple into the Kidron Valley, where it was used

as fertilizer for vegetable gardens. The Temple itself gleamed

from the sheer amount of gold, marble, and bronze used

in its construction. And outside the walls of the Temple were

artisan shops of gold and silver, and other shops of incense

and shewbread catering directly to Temple needs. One need

not have had so lofty a view of religion as Jesus to have

found himself nauseated by such sights in a city whose ritual

purity was promptly restored at sunrise each morning by an

army of street cleaners.”
And further,
” It was Jesus’ preaching of the coming kingdom at the

Temple that drew the adverse reaction of Temple officials,
56 INDIA AND ISRAEL CHAPTER 2
who may have warned Roman police authorities about him.

Messianic preaching at the Temple site during the Passover

would have been interpreted as an incitement to revolt.

Jewish Temple officials guarded against nationalistic

expressions, particularly at festival time, lest the permanently

stationed Roman garrison act against people and priests alike.

Possibly Jerusalem’s Jewish leaders had heard of the troubles

Jesus had encountered in the Galilee with the Pharisees and

officials of Herod Antipas.” A source thus describes the last

supper:
”The eve of the Passover Festival approached. It was marked

then, as it is to this day by Jews all over the world, by a

ritual meal called the ’Seder’ when the story of the exodus

from Egypt is recited and certain foods are taken which

symbolise the dramatic events of that liberation. The bread

eaten (matzah) is unleavened-to symbolise the haste of the

Israelite departure so that there was no time for the dough

to rise; the tasting of bitter herbs is a reminder of the harsh

life and labour suffered by the Israelite slaves; a shank bone

represents the slaughtered paschal lamb whose blood was

sprinkled on the doorposts of Israelite dwellings just before

the exodus so that the angel of death would ’pass over’

them when he went to slay the Egyptian first-born. Four

glasses of ritual wine are drunk during the recital. Such was

the Passover meal celebrated by the Jew, Jesus, and his

disciples, the meal that was to be known very much later,

with the rise of Christianity as The Last Supper, and out of

which was to grow the ritual of the Mass.”
And the narrative goes on:
”In any event, Jesus was arrested for committing a civil offense

of sedition, and was subsequently executed ; a common

punishment for this offense according to Roman practice by

crucifixion. He was not the first nor the last Jew to be so

arrested and executed. The tragedy of Jesus’ death is that

he seems to have underestimated the effect of his messianic

preaching in Jerusalem at the Passover. He expected to be